His mother. Fallen gods. Cléa’s wide mouth was set in a line that meant she was on a mission, and she wore her gold-and-garnet horn caps, which meant she’d just come from a skyball or some other formal event.
“Brace yourself,” Bastien murmured.
“Rikard.” She arrived at the table, slightly breathless, and placed a proprietary hand on his shoulder. “There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere. You weren’t in your office. You weren’t in the eyrie. Now I find you wasting away in your cups?”
“Is it so shocking that I would choose to relax during my leisure hours?”
“We don’t have time for your wit. Come with me. We need to talk.” She tugged at him, her claws digging into his scarred hide when he refused to budge.
He pulled his arm from her grip. “I’m among friends. Whatever it is, say it here.”
She sighed, snapping her teeth in annoyance. “Have it your way. Élowen of the eighth tier extended an invitation to our family to join hers for an autumn hunt. She specifically asked that you would attend.” His mother’s voice dropped to a confidential murmur. “Eighth tier, Rikard. Her father was a wing commander in the Third Watch, decorated twice. Thefamily has hunting rights in the northern foothills. Do you understand what this could mean?”
He understood all too well. Cléa had produced another eligible female for his inspection, like a cat depositing a dead bird upon his doorstep.
“I’m not interested.”
“You haven’t even met her. She’s lovely. Wide wingspan, excellent hips.”
Beside him, Drogan’s snicker caused him to inhale his mead, and even Bastien’s ears twitched with the effort of suppressing a reaction. Lucan, mercifully, was too deep in his performance to notice.
“Send her my regrets.” Rikard turned back to his drink, but his mother’s claws dug into his shoulder this time, deep enough to register.
“At least meet with her. You owe me that much.”
He owed her far more than that, and they both knew it. She’d held their family together through his deployment and the aftermath of his reconstruction. She’d maintained their seventh-tier status when he was missing and suppressed the whispers about his condition once he came back. He owed her everything, and the debt crushed him because he could never repay it in the currency she wanted.
“Decline the invitation, Mother. Or don’t, and enjoy a successful hunt. But leave me out of it.”
“What is the matter with you?” Cléa hissed close to his ear so he couldn’t miss a word despite Lucan’s raucous song. “She’s perfect. Pretty, well-connected, from a high-tier family. What more do you want?!”
Bastien’s face had transformed into sympathy, which was worse than the laughter. Rikard’s jaw worked as he swallowed his bitterness. It was not Cléa’s fault he was broken, but he wished she would not pretend that he was whole. But she keptpresenting him with the same impossible test, and the failure stung worse each time.
“How do you expect me to hunt with her? Will she carry me on her back? Tow me behind her like a kite?”
“You could watch the hunt from the ground and then feast with the rest of us.” His mother’s face crumpled for an instant before she ironed it smooth again. She knew the humiliation she proposed. Of course she knew.
He did not enjoy being cruel to his mother, but she would not rest until he was. He leaned against the wall and drained his cup again with lazy insolence. “I’ll stick to my human harlots. At least they don’t expect me to catch their dinner before I fuck them.”
He said it to shock her, and it worked. Cléa’s wide mouth fell open, and her stocky frame went rigid. She shot a panicked glance at the moth battering itself against the sconce beside the table and waved a furious hand at it, as though she could erase the gossip from its tiny mind.
It giggled as it dodged her. “The Nadir doesn’t feed his human harlots,” it chortled in its thin, reedy voice. “He likes them hungry.”
“Don’t say such things where they can hear!” she whispered fiercely, her eyes watering. Perhaps he’d gone too far this time. “The moths already call you a deviant. Do you want them spreading this, too?”
“They can say what they like. It hardly matters.” But he rose from his seat and bid goodbye to his distracted friends. Thankfully, they’d lost interest in his family business because Lucan had unlaced his breeches, and they were attempting to wrestle him down from the table before he disrobed entirely.
Cléa, however, could not be distracted. She carried on as they exited the tavern. “It matters to me! It matters to your father. It matters to every gargoyle in our family who depends on our tierfor their standing.” Her eyes glistened, and he hated himself for putting the shine there. “You are the Nadir. You earned us our seventh-tier status. If you won’t secure it with a mate and an heir, someone else will take it from you.”
“No one wants the Nadir’s seat.”
“Perrin does.”
His distant cousin on his mother’s side, Perrin was a smooth-tongued gargoyle a few years younger than him, with a good set of horns and little else to remark upon. Rikard had filed him away as one of the many relatives who enjoyed the family’s status because it earned him invitations to good parties. He’d never noticed any particular ambition in him.
“So? He has no claim to the seat unless I’m dead.”
“That’s why you need an heir,” she reminded him as they walked together. “If you die without one, he will be appointed. Or if the Zenith deems you unsuitable for the position.”
